Two wordy plays are cur­rently show­ing in Wel­ling­ton. Both are very good.

The Angry Bri­gade by James Gra­ham, dir­ec­ted by Samuel Phil­lips

Four police officers are in a base­ment office in Lon­don try­ing to track down some ter­ror­ists. Threats have been made. Bombs have gone off. It’s not the IRA. In fact, they’re not like any­thing the team has seen before. In order to catch the crim­in­als, they’ll have to invest­ig­ate and exper­i­ence the things the crim­in­als like – the things that soci­ety dis­ap­proves of…

Based on a real life situ­ation and named after the anarch­ist group who car­ried out the bomb­ings this is a play full of words. All the cast deliv­er them quickly as sen­tences tumble over each oth­er. Patrick Car­roll is key in the first half of the play. He’s great as the buttoned up team lead­er who has to lead his team in get­ting into the mind­set of the bombers. Com­frey Sanders shines in the second half show­ing the emo­tion­al jour­ney her char­ac­ter takes. Andrew Pat­ter­son is also best in the second half with a well roun­ded char­ac­ter­isa­tion. Karin McCrack­en is equally good in both halves.

The com­pany have found a ter­rif­ic  space in Tory street. Brown paper on the win­dows hides the car park­ing build­ing on the oppos­ite side of the street while street noises fil­ter through. The script is dense with words and two halves that are struc­tur­ally com­ple­ment­ary. Dir­ect­or Samuel Phil­lips keeps the pace up which I think is really import­ant. How­ever this means some of the emo­tion­al changes in the first half come as a sur­prise as there doesn’t seem to be any­thing to sup­port them. Excel­lent cos­tumes by Har­riet Denby echo the struc­ture of the script.

A play about past events on the oth­er side of the world which res­on­ates today.

 

Gif­ted by Patrick Evans, dir­ec­ted by Con­rad New­port

The play has a tagline “When Janet Frame met Frank Sargeson a story” but it’s really ‘What Frank Sargeson makes of Janet Frame.’ Or maybe even ‘What char­ac­ter-Frank-Sargeson makes of char­ac­ter-Janet-Frame.’ Frame is presen­ted as sort of a man­ic pix­ie dream girl who becomes sim­ul­tan­eously more real and more oracle-like the more Sargeson gets to know her. Her love of words clashes with his love of real­ism as the self-described ‘fath­er of the nation’s fic­tion’ struggles to get to know her.

Strong dir­ec­tion by Con­rad New­port makes it clear that this is not a play based in a nat­ur­al time­frame. People appear and dis­ap­pear through the mar­vel­lous set design from Daniel Wil­li­ams (which incor­por­ates a work­ing kit­chen, a fake garden, and a nifty little wooden hut.) Andrew Laing as Sargeson has the bulk of the lines and emo­tion­al weight of the play. His phys­ic­al­ity is very watch­able, and he man­ages to cre­ate a con­nec­tion with the audi­ence that car­ries us through the two hour show. Har­riet Preb­ble as Frame has the dif­fi­cult job of hav­ing to be slightly aloof and unreal, yet still relat­able, which she man­ages with good skill. Simon O’Connor plays Harry Doyle, Sargeson’s on again, off again lov­er. He is suit­ably annoy­ing and crass. The passing of time is shown by clev­er trans­itions and sup­por­ted by good light­ing design (Jen­nifer Lal) and cos­tume changes (designed by Mary­anne Wright-Smith, Daniel Wil­li­ams). I like the col­our scheme in the cos­tumes too – pale sum­mery col­ours for Sargeson, prints for Frame, and clas­sic dark suit­ing for Doyle.

All in all I really enjoyed this pro­duc­tion.

  • Gif­ted on at Circa Theatre to 31 Octo­ber 2015